Original Kleptonian Neo-American Church

Chapter 40

THREE YEARS LATER

I said, name the day, and I would take fifty assistants and stand up
against the massed chivalry of the whole earth and destroy it.

In the summer of ’70, when I was living on the property as a private
guest, after doing time in the Northampton, Massachusetts, jail for
possession of the sacraments and lewd and lascivious cohabitation with
a Smithie, I got another lesson in politics. Billy and I were
flying down the Hudson in the helicopter right after the Kent State
murders. Even Bennett College in Millbrook, a junior college for
girls, which had been given its library by Billy’s mother, as he
informed a stunned librarian who had asked us what connection we had
with the college one day, was in an uproar. I happened to know one of
the leading firebrands, Susie Werneke, very well. Billy was angry
also. The Kent State murders and Kissinger’s insane bombing of
Cambodia had succeeded in arousing his normally torpid sense of civic
responsibility.

“Listen, Art,” Billy said, after making his usual detour to view
Pocatino Hills, shake his fist, and yell some expletives down at the
Rockefellers below (the Governor was apparently entertaining some nuns
at a garden luncheon), “Why don’t you write an editorial right now,
and if I like it I’ll print it in Il Tiempo. I mean, what the
fuck, what? If a bunch of Bennett girls can get out and do something,
I feel I can too, and the way things are going now, what do I have to
lose?”

I wrote out an editorial as we flew along. There was nothing in it
which would have caused the slightest lifting of eyebrows at the
New York Times or even at the Poughkeepsie Journal. My
emphasis was on the danger of antagonizing an entire generation by
shooting them at random, and so forth. The usual stuff. I can’t
usually write the usual stuff, but I guess I was angry enough to do it
then. Billy thought it was wonderful.

The apoplectic, anti-Castro editor had been replaced by a more
businesslike type who didn’t write the editorials, but who followed
the same general policy as his predecessor. While we were having beer
and sausages at “21,” Billy handed his new boy my editorial, saying,
“By the way, I would really like to see this printed.”

The editor put my paper in his pocket without reading it and went back
to explaining how insiders could make a fast buck in collectors’
issues of South American postage stamps. The editorial identifying
Nixon and Kissinger as war criminals was never printed. When I asked
how the editor had justified this insubordination, Billy shrugged.

“He said it wasn’t right for our audience,” Billy said. “I guess he
has a point.”

And that was the end of that one.

Back to 1967.

Wendy and I both had doubts about tying the knot, but there was no
doubt at all that an infant was aimed straight at us, head first, we
hoped. Another factor was the difficulty prosecutors faced in trying
to force spouses to testify against each other. Considering
everything, holy wedlock seemed like the right thing to do.

We went every day to the post office in Millbrook, where, with a
couple exceptions when $100 bills brightened the day, causing the
birds in the trees to sing more melodiously, there would be $10 or $15
at most; enough to buy cigarettes, wine and groceries and, perhaps, to
mail out Divine Toad Sweats to those who had asked for them and
do the laundry.

Nobody paid regular dues and very few of our members, most of whom
were students who spent every spare nickel they had on the lesser
sacrament, had stable addresses or stable incomes. I might have been
able to come up with another book or a magazine but there was no way
to produce either without capital. The irony of our prime patron
owning a foreign-language newspaper during this period, when we were
entirely at the mercy of an establishment media, seemed pretty routine
by that time.

I still hadn’t met Wendy’s parents, but she assured me they would
cover the expenses of her having a child, if nothing else. They
did. Tim was enthusiastic about the marriage, and readily agreed to
perform the ceremony, which would be held outdoors in front of the Big
House.

“It’s one of the most sensible moves you have ever made, Arthur,” Tim
assured me. Well, maybe.

Tim’s own domestic situation was deteriorating. It was pretty clear
that the tent in the hills was not going over much better with
Rosemary than the mud hut in Nepal had gone over with Nina. Tim
ejected Susan Schoenfeld on a charge of turning Rosemary on to some
junk, which always finds a market among those leading the simple life
involuntarily. It was the first time I had heard of any heroin being
around and, although no one appeared to be hooked on the stuff, Tim’s
reaction, if founded on fact, made sense. If any of us had been busted
for narcotics possession, it would have done more political harm than
a thousand pot or acid busts.

Opiates are not nearly as dangerous as the official propaganda
maintains, and if it were up to me I would restore the days of yore
when most farm families routinely bought a pound of opium around
Thanksgiving to see them through the chills and ills of winter (I have
seen the evidence). For most people, it’s much safer to smoke opium
than to down a few martinis.

It’s all a genetic roulette-wheel trip, and some predispositions are
demonized while others are tolerated or even subsidized for reasons
which have nothing to do with health and everything to do with
furthering the interests of the owning and ruling classes. Is drug
x easier or harder to control than drug y? Is drug
x more profitable than drug y? These are the only
questions that really matter in the capitalist scheme of things. What
is good is bad and what is bad is good.

You say that drug x stimulates the imagination, encourages
critical thought and provides ordinary people with a cheap source of
home entertainment?

They feel no guilt over their criminal conduct?

Some of them grow their own?

Well, if such be the case, no profits are being made and no taxes are
being paid. These considerations, on top of the Sado-Judeo-Paulinian
terror of anything that changes people for the better here on this
earth, is more than enough to do it. The sky is falling and the end of
the world is at hand. Call out the troops.

Prior to the introduction of the powerful psychedelics, I think the
American drug laws were best understood in Marxist terms. Since then,
I think religious combat underlies it all, but Marxist logic still
applies and is good enough to explain things to the satisfaction of
most lawyers and shallow thinkers in general.

Unlike psychedelics, however, it is true, opiates and coca are highly
addictive in the incredibly concentrated forms in which prohibition
forces producers to deliver these drugs to their markets. If it wasn’t
for the laws, most people would smoke a little opium for their aches
and pains and chew a few coca leaves for a lift now and then and never
become addicted.

Neither substance, in any concentration except an extreme overdose,
does any direct physical harm. Many addicts, including thousands of
physicians, function better on the stuff than off it. W.C. Fields,
speaking of booze, had it right: “In my experience, it is most often
the absence, rather than the presence, of the substance in question
that causes all the problems.”

The property crime and general physical debility associated with
opiate use in the United States is entirely the result of the high
price that most addicts must pay to obtain their daily ration, and the
highly refined form it comes in, and both the price and the potency
are direct consequences of prohibition.

As has been clearly demonstrated by the humane and rational European
ways of dealing with the problem, an addict who is allowed to obtain
what he needs at little or no cost will often eat three meals a day
and trudge off to work in the morning just like everyone else. If
anything, he is less likely to commit crimes than his non-addicted
contemporaries because, once he has his fix, and no worries about
getting the next one, he is generally content with a quiet, modest
existence and not about to go roaring off into the night in search of
cheap thrills the way boozers and speed freaks do. Addiction, per se,
is not all that serious a problem. The problem is addiction in a
context of high prices and criminal sanctions against use.

It’s an American problem, deliberately created by the stone-hearted
American capitalist oligarchy to crush working-class people under as
many capricious and arbitrary burdens as possible, to turn them
against each other and terrorize them and prevent them from thinking
straight about anything.

My wife, my daughter and I lived in “Nieuw Amsterdam,” a huge housing
development southeast of Amsterdam, from the spring of 1988 until
January of 1991, when we were forced to return to the United States
because of crimes committed against us by a DEA agent named D. O’Neill
and his co-conspirators in the Dutch police, Mossad, and American
Express, who stole our mail, burned our money and attempted to fry our
brains with subsonic vibrations, or something. I got this stopped by
calling in the fire department to investigate (a little tip there for
all you folks having your brains fried), but we were never informed
about what kind of infernal machine had been at work, just as we
expected we wouldn’t be.

Most of this happened after the Dutch Ministry of Justice, fully
informed by me of my criminal record in the United States, had granted
us residence, and on liberal terms at that. The American mind police
intervened, and had the decision reversed, asserting, along with other
lies, that the Neo-American Church (about one-third of the members of
which always have been and are now racially Semitic) had a “Nazi
basis.” We didn’t have any proof of this until it was too late to do
anything about it, and then we got copies of the incriminating
documents by accident, or so it seemed anyway. (See Kleps v. The
Netherlands, ECHR 19551/92.)

“Love it or leave it?” Not anymore. You will stay on the plantation
you were born on, unless drafted to put down insurrections on other
plantations, and grin from ear to ear when massa passes by with his
lash. Oh yeah, maybe they will let you move if it will help depress
wages somewhere else. I always forget about that one.

Putting aside the guardians of law and order, Holland in general
compared to the United States as fresh air from the North Sea compared
to industrial pollutants blowing up into Texas from the nightmarish
industrial slums along the Mexican border. Our spacious,
high-ceilinged, three-bedroom apartment, which overlooked a small lake
with lots of fish, ducks and swans in and on it, cost us about $200 a
month. The finest Moroccan hashish, available from over 250 coffee
houses around the city, cost $7.50 a gram. We were surrounded by
Third-World immigrants, many of whom were on the dole and many of whom
were “illegals” supported by those on the dole and by individual
initiatives of various kinds.

The guaranteed annual income for all legal residents included a
vacation allowance sufficient for a month in Spain every year. The
powers that were had decided that people who don’t have jobs need
vacations as much as those who do. I agree. We do.

Opiate addicts were common, but there were also all kinds of services
for these unfortunate folks. The community was peaceful, pretty and
well-tended. We bicycled around in the genuine parklands between the
buildings, even in the late evening, without apprehension. The
atmosphere, both physical and social, reminded me of Westchester
during the ’30s and ’40s. What more can I say?

Long live the Queen!

The Wendy-Arthur wedding went off pretty smoothly, although for a
while it looked like Tim would refuse to preside and we would have to
ask Haines to do it.

The problem was Susan Shoenfeld. While I was up at the Bungalow early
in the morning getting dressed in some of Billy’s finery and having a
couple Bloody Marys, Susan, our most recent outcast, walked in.

Billy, who, like Otto, ranked Susan in the highly attractive category,
and did not know about her recent expulsion from the League,
immediately asked if she was staying for the wedding. “Sure, why don’t
you, Susan,” I added. I had nothing against Susan, and appreciated
her style. Although, like Peggy, she was too boyish for my tastes, her
voodoo nonsense amused me greatly.

Heretofore, oddly enough, most of my conversations with Susan had been
about self-defense. She claimed to have burned Doc Duvalier’s Chief of
Police in Haiti a year or so earlier in an acid deal (it was typical
of Susan not to bother making excuses for this conduct) and feared the
Ton Ton Macoute might find her and carve her heart out, or something.
When she asked me for advice, I suggested that she might buy a .22
semi-automatic rifle in town and keep it under her bed.

If any crazed zombies covered with blood and chicken feathers tried to
break her door down in the middle of the night, she could fill them
full of holes, which might slow the ungrateful dead down long enough
so she could jump out the window or take some other evasive
action.

Susan, who hadn’t known it was legal and easy to procure a firearm in
the land of the free and the home of the brave, immediately bought a
Ruger, with a little clip and lots of ammunition, at the Millbrook
hardware store. She didn’t hunt with her rifle, but enjoyed shooting
at targets in the woods, which was enough to alarm and offend Haines,
who eventually seized the weapon and threw it in the smaller lake
behind the Gatehouse. Just as he was pitching it in, he told me, a
carload of Bungalow visitors passed over the bridge where he was
standing (in his robes, as it happened), with his arms upraised and
the rifle in his hands, thereby creating an intriguing subject for
dinner table speculation, no doubt.

Leaving Susan at the Bungalow, I drove down to the Big House to check
on the arrangements. Banners and streamers and shrine areas were all
over the place. The black tanka hung from a line strung over the stone
steps to the Big House front lawn where the ceremony would be held. I
didn’t have the heart to take it down. No matter what the intentions
of whoever put it up, it was, Snazzm, a black cat case. Perhaps I
should have called off the wedding, but removing the warning sign
wouldn’t have accomplished anything.

Tim was not ready to preside. I found him on a tractor cutting grass
at the west side of the house, dressed in a pair of old shorts. I
drove the Cadillac up to him. What in hell was going on?

“Art, did you invite Susan Schoenfeld to the wedding?” he asked, after
shutting off the engine. His face was set in stern lines.

Jesus Christ! News traveled fast at Millbrook.

“Well, yeah, Tim,” I said. “Billy and I did. We didn’t invite her back
to live here, just to stay for the ceremony.”

“Unless you have her off the property in half an hour I won’t perform
the wedding,” Tim said, not betraying the slightest hint of
amusement. He was dead serious. Tim had decided Susan was a “downer”
and Tim had no mercy on “downers.”

“OK. I don’t care much either way,” I said. “You had better get
cleaned up, though. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”

“Just get her out of here,” Tim said, his face relaxing somewhat. “I
don’t want that girl anywhere near me. She’s pure poison.”

“I just don’t worship him anymore,” Susan said, when, back at the
Bungalow, I asked her what the trouble was.

“I’ll take care of it,” Billy volunteered. “Tell Tim I took her to the
station.”

Who performed the ceremony didn’t matter much to me, but when I called
Wendy about it, she was insistent that I persuade Tim to do it, as he
had promised. The invocation of the name of William Haines (who?)
would not have improved her status among the Jewish princesses of New
York nearly as much as the invocation of the name of Timothy (no
shit?) Leary.

I drove back. All was well. Tim was in his office on the third floor
having flowers stuck in his hair by Rosemary. I gave Bhavani, who was
standing by, a box of ladyfingers and a small bottle of Sandoz LSD in
solution from the large reserve of crystal that Tommy held in a safety
deposit box in Barclay’s Bank in London. When Tim saw the bottle, his
mood altered abruptly from mild resignation to eager anticipation.

Haines appeared, caught the mood instantly and, after a few coarse
remarks concerning the consummation of my forthcoming union, fell with
relish to assisting Bhavani in the preparation of the
sacraments. Since some straight visitors were already on hand, and
more were expected, including Wendy’s family, we agreed that only 25
micrograms per ladyfinger would be a good idea.

Michael Green, wearing only a pair of shorts and a lei, walked
in. Wendy and her family had arrived, he reported. Her mother was
crying, and her father looked “sort of stunned.” I drove back to the
Bungalow and returned with the Hitchcocks, the Clapps, and another car
carrying Jack and Jimmy and several cases of champagne, which Jack and
Jimmy put down on the porch by a table with the traditional cake. All
was in readiness. Tim and Tambimutto were standing under the tanka.

About fifty people, many of whom I didn’t recognize, were sitting on
the lawn. To the sound of bongo drums and flutes, Billy, my best man,
and I walked to the summer house where I had my first sight of my
parents-in-law-to-be. Classic bourgeois Jewish in appearance, they
looked as stunned as Michael had described them. But most of our
visitors looked stunned when they first arrived, even if they were not
there to see their daughters wed to an alien from “inner space.”

Wendy’s sister, Jill, smiling brightly in the sunshine, looked like
one of Joe’s Scandinavian blondes. Billy muttered an appreciative
comment before we got within hearing range. Her husband, Wally, who
operated a company that handed out annual awards for the best TV
commercials of the year, looked like the classic MadAveExec that he
was. Their four-year-old daughter, beaming like her mother, clutched a
bouquet.

We all walked back, appropriately paired and tripled, to the steps
under the black tanka. Tim uttered some typical Timisms, Tambimutto
read from the Vedas, cymbals clashed, and pipes played.
Ladyfingers were passed, and I noted that Tim’s identification of them
as “the sacrament of our religion” had not made any impression at all
on the straight segment of our audience. Mrs. Williams was eating one
and so was the little flower girl.

As soon as the ceremony was over, and everyone was up on the porch
sloshing down the bubbly, as Otto put it, and eating cake, Wendy
steered me over into the far corner of the porch and anxiously asked,
“Arthur, how much did you put in those ladyfingers?” She was relieved
when I told her it wasn’t much. Jill’s daughter played happily with
the resident kids, who were enjoying the opportunity to have a small
dose in an outdoor party setting. Mr. Williams and Wally, both mildly
stoned, joined enthusiastically in a baseball game that Tim
organized.

Mrs. Williams, however, tossed her cookies and passed out, but
regained consciousness quickly. She wasn’t able to describe her
symptoms and seemed relieved when we told her she was on a very minor
LSD trip and would return to normal consciousness in a few hours. I
suspect she had two, maybe three. We put her to bed in the
Gatehouse. Later, Wendy said she thought this little trip had loosened
her mother up somewhat.

Well, legally staked out once again. At least this time nobody could
accuse me of leading an innocent maiden into perdition. I had found
her there, and the term “innocent maiden,” in any sense, did not
apply.

Surprisingly often during the 1967 “Summer of Love,” considering how
many visitors we had and how threatening the political situation came
to be, not much would happen on any given day. It was possible to
relax and converse, drink, putter around, read, go fishing or
swimming, drink, or whatever.

I retain in my memory an unusually detailed recollection of one
low-key scene of this kind, probably because it has such a mild,
mellow P.G. Wodehouse flavor.

Billy and Tommy and I were drinking beer and discussing the foibles of
mutual acquaintances, on lawn chairs in “Swami’s corner,” an alcove in
the stone wall that traced the perimeter of the Gatehouse-bridge
region. Swami was present only in blithe spirit, but plenty of his
more colorful and tuneful relatives were around, chirping it up.

There were no women, rivals, children, servants or courtiers present,
just the four of us birds, one ectoplasmic. I’m pretty sure it was a
Sunday afternoon. If not, it felt like it.

Things had become so relaxed that, despite the character flaw to which
I have already alluded, I was about to bring up the financial
condition of the religious institution for which, in one way or
another, we were all responsible, present balance zero, when there was
a soprano “hello” from the gate.

“Naturally,” I moodily muttered to myself, as I ambled over, glass in
hand, feeling more relieved than disappointed, if the truth be told.
It was fate. Did I harbor an unconscious dread of the almighty dollar?
Should I wear a T-shirt with “Born to be Broke” on it? Could be.

It was the mother of a kid from town who was a schoolmate and close
friend of Jackie Leary. The boy had recently been busted for growing a
couple pot plants in a window box in his bedroom. The connection with
Jackie had not gone unremarked in the press and it was not now going
unremarked by the lad’s mother, who had obviously had a few, and who
can blame her?

“Well, come on over, have a beer and tell us all about it,” I said,
ushering her through the pedestrian gate. What else could I do? And
it would be a good idea if Billy and Tommy got this kind of story from
a primary source, for a change.

I introduced her, and Tommy gave up his chair, moving to a concrete
bench built into the wall. I didn’t introduce Billy and Tommy,
thinking our guest already knew them, such was the seeming familiarity
of the friendly greetings exchanged.

She was a pleasant sort and, although justifiably pissed off about the
situation in general, not really hostile to the community.

I was OK, Haines was OK, but Timothy Leary was a different story
altogether. She went on in this vein, one not entirely unwelcome to my
ears, for some time.

I noticed that Billy and Tommy were both grinning, and that Billy was
egging her on. Suddenly it dawned on me: She hadn’t recognized the
twins. For all she knew, they might have been Bertie Wooster and Bingo
Little.

“Well,” I said, when the flow slackened for a moment, “what about the
people who brought Tim Leary here in the first place? Don’t you think
they have some responsibility for what goes on around here?”

Chronic worrier though he was, this situation was just too fraught
with comedy for Tommy to resist. Like Billy, he was bursting with
suppressed merriment. The junior pot farmer’s mother was pretty merry
also, oddly enough. The mood was infectious, I guess.

“You mean that Billy Hitchcock?” she asked. It was evident it took
some effort, but if her congenial hosts at this impromptu gathering
were inclined to dump on Billy Hitchcock she would add her two cents’
worth.

“Why, that Billy Hitchcock is probably the worst of them all,” she
declared, with great emphasis. I poured her another glass of beer.
Billy vehemently agreed with her generalization about “Billy
Hitchcock’s” location on the moral totem pole, and pressed her for
more details about her son’s case, and for anything and everything she
might have to say about anything and everything on the place. It went
on for quite a while. Rarely, I think, has any woman been given a
better opportunity to bitch to a more receptive audience. When the
flow threatened to end, I put in a word about how “rich people think
they can get away with anything” which restarted the conversation as
if I had administered benzedrine to all present.

“I’ve noticed that,” said Tommy.

There are few subjects upon which people with ordinary incomes are
more eager to animadvert, particularly when they are in their cups,
unless someone rich is present, in which case not a word is ever said
about it.

It was good for another fifteen minutes at least. An atmosphere of
uninhibited frankness prevailed. If it hadn’t, Milwaukee would not be
what it is today.

“Um, if you don’t mind my asking,” the townswoman asked, “who are you
two guys? I know Mr. Kleps here, but …”

“Call me Art,” I interjected.

“I’m Billy Hitchcock,” said Billy, with the exact degree of mirth
appropriate.

“What? You’re kidding me!” Her startled eyes swiveled to Tommy, who
also confessed.

She took it well, considering everything. There was only one,
faint-hearted recrimination, and she couldn’t even manage a frown for
that:

“You’ve all been teasing me.”

“No, no,” Billy said. “Honestly, we wanted to hear what you had to
say.”

Tommy and I chimed in along the same lines. It had been too good a
chance to pass up. Yes, it had been pretty funny, but also most
informative and interesting. Billy and Tommy were eager to help her
solve her problem in any way they could. No lawyer? What about Noel
Tepper?

Amidst mutual expressions of esteem and calls for a replay sometime,
our little party broke up. Our visitor departed, with a great story to
tell back home.

Dinner at the Bungalow tonight? Sure thing. “Now, that was fun,”
Tommy said, before he and Billy took off in Tommy’s Chevy.

I think the kid got a year suspended or something like that. If so, it
may have been enough to keep him out of Vietnam. Getting busted saved
quite a few kids from getting mangled or killed in those days.

I can’t remember exactly when the startling event took place, but
sometime in the summer of 1967 Mummy made what amounted to an
inspection tour of the property. When the news of her presence at the
Bungalow came in, I happened to be at the Ashram, and on good terms
with Bill, so I guess it was around the time that the Catechism
was being printed. Maybe the Catechism had been printed, and
she had seen a copy, which would help to explain what happened and did
not happen.

Bill, who may have been on a light dose at the time, was electrified
by the news. He seemed to interpret her visit in an entirely positive
light, although nobody else did, and rushed to get cleaned up, don his
robes, commandeer a car and driver, and dash off for the Bungalow,
although no invitation had been extended.

It was clear that visions of sugarplums were dancing in his head.

He was back in ten minutes, looking about as shell-shocked as I have
ever seen him look. “You had better get down to the Gatehouse, Kleps,”
Haines muttered in an aside to me as he swept past. “She is only here
to look the place over and you are definitely on her hit list.”

Questions were asked but none were answered. Bill vanished into his
room, and I took off for the Gatehouse.

“Mummy is coming!” I announced to Wendy, who looked properly
galvanized by the news. We both rushed around like maniacs, trying to
make the dump look semi-inhabitable. I mopped the stairs and dusted as
much of the surrounding wood as I could reach, while Wendy
concentrated on our barren quarters themselves. Sure enough, about an
hour later, while we were both still frantically attempting to make a
sow’s ear look like a silk purse, why I don’t know, a Rolls pulled up
in the parking lot and a woman attired entirely in black, accompanied
by a man attired in similarly funereal garb, alighted.

I swung open a window.

“Hi,” I said. “Mrs. Hitchcock?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Art Kleps. Please come up. The door’s open.”

Mummy never cracked a smile, and declined to sit. She stood on the
second-floor landing in the doorway, while her companion hung back a
little, and shot questions at me and Wendy in drill-sergeant
tones. She was obviously a woman accustomed to command, and I must
confess to being somewhat jolted by the experience.

Who were we? What were we doing here? Who invited us? Isn’t that
illegal? Good-bye.

“Holy shit,” I said to Wendy, as the Rolls rolled over the bridge.

Had we played it wrong? Probably. Would it have made any difference
if we had played it right? I doubt it, unless suddenly stabbing the
woman in the ass with a hypodermic full of acid would be considered
“playing it right.” That would have galvanized a lot of people into
action, and made some kind of difference, but exactly what kind of
difference it would have made is a whole other question.

And that was the end of that one. I don’t remember ever saying a word
to Mummy’s sons or daughters-in-law about her visit or hearing a word
about it from them. We didn’t even talk about it among ourselves. It
was like one of those minor earthquakes in California. The day it
happens, nobody talks about anything else. The day after, people are
strangely uncommunicative. The day after that, it’s as if it never
happened.

Mummy, according to Billy, did not exactly revel in her status as a
prime specimen of the Mellon zillions on the hoof. “Oh, I don’t know,
boys,” she would often say as they rolled past Levittown or some other
’50s development of modest new houses, “sometimes I think I should
give all the money away and we should go live in a house like one of
those over there,” causing little Billy and little Tommy to laugh so
hard they fell off their jump seats.

Nor did she approve of Billy’s undisguised greed for more, more and
yet more. “Why, you’re nothing but a fast-buck artist!” she told him
one time.

Well, we all have our crosses to bear, I guess, as my mother often
remarked.

Speaking of mothers, the Arthur-Wendy wedding seemed to stimulate
Betsy Ross, who had been opportuned by Howie Druck for some time to
make their liaison legal, to make his dreams come true. Their marriage
was celebrated a couple weeks later, but this time at the Bowling
Alley with Bill Haines doing the honors instead of Tim. Haines had
just the right voice for this office: deep, resonant, assured.

It was a pleasure to listen to Haines recite, but it did seem strange
to hear Max Muller’s translation of the Prajna-Paramita at a
wedding ceremony, which, after all, is addition portending
multiplication, rather than subtraction.

But, then again, why not? What better time to remind people of the
illusory nature of the world?

I have it on tape:

“Everything passes, things appearing, things disappearing. But when
it is all over, everything having appeared and having disappeared,
being and extinction both transcended, still the basic emptiness and
silence abides, and that is blissful peace. Thus, oh Saraputra, all
things having the nature of emptiness, have no beginning and have no
ending. They are neither faultless nor not faultless. They are
neither perfect nor imperfect. In emptiness there is no form, no
sensation, no perception, no discrimination, no consciousness, there
is no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no sensitiveness to contact, no
mind. There is no sight, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no
mental process, no object, no knowledge, no cessation of ignorance,
there is no noble Fourfold Truth, no pain, no cause of pain, no
cessation of pain, there is no decay and no death. There is no
knowledge of Nirvana, there is no obtaining of Nirvana. Why is there
no obtaining of Nirvana? Because Nirvana is in the realm of no
thingness. If the ego, soul or personality was an enduring entity it
could not obtain Nirvana. So long as man is seeking highest wisdom he
is still abiding in the realm of consciousness. In highest Samadhi,
having transcended consciousness, he has passed beyond discrimination
and knowledge, beyond the reach of change or fear, he is already
enjoying Nirvana. The perfect understanding of this and the patient
acceptance of it is the highest perfect wisdom, that is, the
Prajna-Paramita. All the buddhas of the past, present and future,
having attained highest samadhi awake to find themselves realizing
Prajna-Paramita. Therefore, oh Saraputra, everyone should seek self
realization of Prajna-Paramita, the transcendent truth, the
unsurpassable truth, the truth that ends all truth, the truth that
ends all pain, the truth that is forever true. Oh Prajna-Paramita, oh
transcendent truth that spans the troubled ocean of life and death,
safely carry all seekers to the other shore of Enlightenment. Listen
to the mantra, the great mysterious mantra: Gate, gate, paragate,
parasamgate, bodhisvha! Gone, gone, gone to that other shore, safely
passed to that other shore. Prajna-Paramita. So may it be. Wisdom,
hail!”

Ladyfingers were also distributed at the Betsy-Howie wedding, but they
had much more of a kick to them than ours had had, and Haines made
sure that everyone knew about it.

As a result, most of the straight guests present didn’t take any,
although quite a few put one or two away for a rainy day. All,
however, were treated to a demonstration of what is meant by the
expression “freaking freely” which will probably remain indelibly
engraved on their memories for life. During the reception, someone
shouted, “Hey, who’s that up on the roof?” and all eyes turned
skyward.

Pat McNeill, naked as a jaybird, was prancing around on the porch roof
in front of Tim’s room. Beatles music floated down to us, as well as
Pat’s voice.

She was shouting, “Yoo hoo, Timothy Leary, come on up here. I want to
get fucked” and other requests of a similar nature, interspersed with
snatches of song and girlish giggles. Someone stepped out of a window
and pulled her in. Conversation at the party, which had been somewhat
strained, became highly animated.

Tim told me later that getting clothes on Pat had been quite a
struggle. Finally, she agreed to put on a pair of Tim’s pants, but
nothing else. Two boo hoos from Philadelphia who happened to be
visiting that day told me that they had been quietly “meditating”
(watching goldfish) in the music room that evening when Pat had
appeared and sat down next to them, bummed a cigarette, made some idle
conversation, and then asked, in a matter-of-fact tone, “Hey, would
you guys care to fuck?” They didn’t, perhaps because they were not
attracted to women in general.

“Let’s fuck” trips are pretty common, although Pat’s was more dramatic
than most. Her ideation, if any, probably went something like
this:

Now that I’m stoned, what do I want to do?

What I really want to do is get humped by Timothy Leary, my sterling
guru.

Why not ask for it? It’s natural, and nothing to be ashamed of.

After all, should I be secretive, sneaky and hypocritical about this
or come right out with it?

Nobody has the right to criticize me for expressing a natural
wish. Dishonesty is one of the greatest curses of mankind.

Why shouldn’t women say they want to screw just like the men do?

Come to think of it, why shouldn’t I take my clothes off and dance on
the roof? That would be fun, and men like to look at naked women,
don’t they? If I want Tim to fuck me, I should show him what he’s
getting.

What about Rosemary?

To hell with Rosemary. All’s fair in love and war.

What about embarrassing my husband and children and Howie and Betsy
and so forth?

I’m setting a good example. They should all take off their clothes
too, and announce whom they want to fuck. Everybody wants to fuck. Why
don’t they take their clothes off and go at it?

If this was, indeed, the way Pat thought, it would have been difficult
to refute her at any point.

She wasn’t waving a gun around. She was waving her ass around. Was
Pat’s ass injuring anyone?

If Pat had behaved this way in Macy’s basement instead of on the Big
House roof, it would have been a different matter
altogether. “Location is everything,” as they say, or, as Blake put
it, “One law for the lion and the ox is oppression.”

Shortly after the Howie-Betsy wedding, Haines kicked Sarasvati out
into the cruel, Sado-Judeo-Paulinian world once again. Perhaps the
burlesque show on the Big House roof had reminded him of what his most
ardent female admirer really wanted: to be hosed down with his
precious bodily fluids. Immediately after getting the heave-ho,
Sarasvati appeared at the Gatehouse, sobbing and simpering and asking
for my advice.

Since Haines and I were, once again, not on speaking terms, I
suggested that she borrow some of my camping equipment and hide out in
the woods on the hill overlooking the Ashram, so she could spy on the
object of her affections from a safe place. She did, and it drove
Haines into a frenzy, as I had expected.

Reports came back to me of Haines blundering through the brush
brandishing his cane and vowing to suspend his vows of “ahimsa”
(nonviolence) if he caught her. Eventually, much to everyone’s
astonishment, Sarasvati, instead of creeping quietly back into the
outer circle during a trip, as was her usual tactic, left the
property, and wasn’t heard from for about two weeks. When she
returned, beautifully dressed and carrying expensive new luggage
bulging with presents for the kids, Haines was too flabbergasted, and
probably too happy to see her again, to offer any objections. I
happened to be present at the Ashram at the time, my latest difference
of opinion with Bill, whatever it was, having been resolved or, more
likely, totally forgotten.

Her story was incredible even by Millbrookian standards. She had pried
$100 out of Susan Schoenfeld’s ribs before she left, and had taken
this sum to the nearest race track where she placed the entire amount
on the nose of a 100-to-1 shot named Swami, which won. With the
proceeds, she flew down to British Guiana where Dr. Mishra, the
Ashram’s original guru, was living, his visa to the United States
having expired shortly after the Ananda breakup. Mishra treated her
with the greatest civility and invited her to stay as his house guest
for a few days.

When she left, Mishra gave her a present to take to Bill: a bottle of
Scotch whiskey. “What the hell did he give me this for?” Bill asked,
turning it around in his hands and then passing it to me. “He knows I
almost never drink.”

The rest of us, however, did, and it wasn’t long before Sarasvati was
back in her usual rags, rolling around on the floor, giggling and
muttering to herself while Bill gave her an occasional friendly poke
with his cane.

Probably because the chicken coops, where kid visitors often spent the
night, were located there, the worst freak-outs seemed to occur in the
ruined gardens below the farm manager’s house, where stern Clum and
his brood might hear them, or, if they were really lucky, see them. In
one instance, when I happened to be nearby and was called upon to
help, the Clum family, if they were watching, were treated to the
sight of a Chinese boy screaming and writhing around on the ground as
if entangled with an invisible boa constrictor, while a baby-faced,
teenage American girl slowly removed her clothes in front of him, as
if performing some kind of weird sex-cult ritual. That’s the way it
looked when I arrived.

Diana, eighteen, a frequent visitor who had shared some LSD with the
Chinese boy and a couple other kids up on Ecstasy Hill a few hours
earlier, solemnly explained that she thought the Chinese boy was
screaming for her pussy, since that was what he had wanted earlier,
but I managed to convince her that this was an unlikely motive for
flailing the ground with one’s arms and legs while howling like an
animal.

“Come on, Diana,” I said, as I yanked her jeans up, “You’re cute, but
you’re not that cute.”

Using the usual soothing syrup, I talked the Chinese boy down. When he
came out of it, he didn’t remember his freak-out at all, or anything
leading up to it, only the happy parts of the trip up in the hills
earlier, looking down on the misty vistas of the Hudson Valley and
talking to the other kids about the inner meaning of it all. But he
had caused distress in the household of a benefactor, and the way he
had been brought up that was a cause for great shame. No problem,
Chinese boy. It’s all part of the game. Try it again some time.

Diana later became a full-time Ashramite in Arizona, where she and
Betsy and a living doll named Jane did a lot to help relieve the
aridity of it all. The Chinese boy, too embarrassed to return, wrote
us a nice note apologizing for his conduct and saying he had benefited
greatly from the experience. It sure as hell didn’t look like it at
the time, but this is often the case.

Otto punctuated the final months with two bursts of gunfire, neither
one of which hurt anyone or was intended to. The first burst burst
when Sam and Martica Clapp, Billy, Aurora, Wendy and I accompanied him
to the small town near Woodstock where, sure enough, he showed us his
submachine gun factory under the maple trees in a quiet residential
neighborhood. He introduced us to the boss, who praised him as one of
their most trusted advisors on difficult technical problems. As a
fitting climax to our tour of the premises, Otto, while twitching,
sweating and muttering as usual, loaded a few rounds into the drum
magazine of a freshly fabricated 1921 model Thompson and fired a
fusillade from a back door into a mud puddle in the parking lot. None
of the assembly-line workers even bothered to look up from their
work.

The second burst burst after Otto appeared one evening at the
Gatehouse with a brand-new North Vietnamese army rifle and an equally
pristine wooden box of Chinese ammo, and asked to sleep on the floor
of my office that night because he had had a premonition that we would
need protection. How, in the midst of America’s maniacal invasion and
brutalization of Vietnam, had Otto acquired these samples of the
ordnance with which these brave Buddhists defended their homeland
against the demonic power of the Pope and the Pentagon? I didn’t
bother to ask.

Sure enough, at about 3 a.m . some drunks (we presumed) showered the
place with firecrackers and Otto scared them off by firing two sharp,
socialist shots into the earth near the wall. When the State Police
arrived, the noise no doubt having been reported, Otto boldly
presented himself, explained his conduct, and showed them his
weapon.

They left without even writing anything down, perhaps because they
didn’t feel up to an exercise in calligraphy at that hour of the
night, or because they had heard as much of Otto’s surreal and
detail-filled monologue as they wanted to hear, and didn’t feel like
getting all of that down on paper either.

The parties went on.

Aluminum Dreams, a rock group in which Billy had taken an interest,
probably because of the female vocalist, who would soon move on to
greener pastures, took over the second floor of the Big House. They
never made it, and didn’t deserve to. Tim, Bill and I did our best to
ignore them, which wasn’t easy if you happened to be within
earshot. Billy wrote off thousands of dollars which he had put into
equipment and expenses, and almost lost his servants also, because of
the imperious demands the three male musicians made when they were at
the Bungalow.

Tord found a girl, appropriately Amazonian in appearance, who had come
to the property in search of a lost horse. She never seemed to say
anything, at least not when I was around, and Tord became increasingly
incommunicative himself. They lived together on the third floor for a
while and eventually married, off the property.

The “Third World” egalitarian-primitivist group erected a “Tepee Town”
back in the woods. Another group, loosely associated with them, came
in to make a movie. They had professional equipment but little
capital. The general idea was to represent heads as noble Indians and
narcs as depraved sheriffs and drunken lawmen of the Old West, but I
don’t think there was a plot, as the term is normally understood.
There was no script. There was a pink horse, ha ha, but after you’ve
seen one pink horse, you’ve seen them all.

Tim, naturally, did his best to convert these extremely amorphous
cinematographic concepts into The Life and Times of Timothy Leary. As
the producer said to me just before he left, broke and with almost no
usable film, “Well, I’ve discovered one thing. You either go on Tim’s
trip around here or you don’t go on any trip at all,” which I thought
summed up the general situation very well.

If he had simply recorded, without serious interference, snippets of
everyday life on the property it might have made a good flick.

A visitor with a shortwave radio set, which he kept in the trunk of
his car, showed up one day. Since a small island in the Caribbean was
at that time threatening to declare its independence of the U.K. and
casting about for support, we all thought it would be a good idea if
Billy had a chat with the island’s Prime Minister by radio, to see how
he would react to the idea of naturalizing a community of acid heads,
some of whom, presumably, would be filthy rich.

Since Billy, greatly amused, said he thought it was worth a shot, the
radio was set up in the Bungalow’s library, and a mildly stoned and
jovial group gathered to watch the visitor twirl his knobs and tweak
his toggles; a waste of time, as it turned out.

All the ham could get over his device were hilariously synchronistic
snatches of this, that and the other thing from the Caribbean region,
none of which had any practical utility for any of us: communistic
denunciations of the rich, homilies on “communication problems,” news
of drug busts, etc. The island was unreachable, possibly because the
CIA or MI6 or the BVD had jammed the local frequencies.

Billy and I and almost everyone else in the audience enjoyed the farce
for what it was, but the best Tim could manage was a tight smile.
Leaving the ham aside, he seemed to have been the only person
present who had taken the project seriously.

Afterwards, because Tim asked to try out our new used car, I found
myself in the back seat with the ham, a young guy with slicked-back,
black hair and aquiline features, who looked like the model for a line
drawing of a radio enthusiast I had seen many times in my youth, in
advertisements in my favorite magazine of those days, Popular
Science. Here he was, in the flesh.

Wendy sat next to Tim, who proceeded to take the worst and longest way
back to the Big House over the most rutted and pot-holed roads, at an
unsafe speed, while twisting his head around to carry on a
conversation about radio with the guy next to me.

“For Christ’s sake, Tim,” I finally said, after the car had suffered
its third or fourth wrenching shock, “slow down. You’re driving like a
maniac.”

“You think I’m going too fast, Arthur?”

“I have complete faith in you, Tim,” said the ham at my side, before I
could answer.

“Well, I wish you would slow down a little,” said Wendy.

Tim slowed down. To show all was forgiven, I made a comment about how
much of the radio chatter we had heard had been synchronistic with the
project or with life at Millbrook in general.

“Yes,” Tim said. “Amazing, isn’t it? You know, there are times when I
am convinced there is someone or something up there writing the
script.”

“That’s what I think,” said the ham, who then proceeded to deliver a
series of routine speculations about how LSD might enhance “outer
space communication,” and allow us to contact “higher powers” and
such, all of which all of us had heard before ad nauseam from other
visitors intent, not on learning anything, but on securing our
subscription to their favorite fantasies of deliverance from
above. Tim, however, lapped it right up, dropping in a comment here
and there demonstrating that he too, could read Sunday supplements and
science fiction magazines.

Later, because the car would be needed early the next morning to take
someone at the Ashram to the dentist, Wendy and I walked back to the
Gatehouse in the pale moonlight and dark tunnels made by the
overhanging roadside trees.

I made what I thought was a most disillusioning suggestion.

“Wendy,” I said, “let’s face it. Tim’s a supernaturalist
science-fictionalist or something like that. He thinks something up
there (I pointed to a patch of stars in the roof of our leafy
corridor) is doing it. He doesn’t understand synchronicity.”

“I never thought he did,” Wendy said.

If I had not deluded myself about Tim I might not have come to
understand synchronicity myself. There was another strange aspect: It
seemed to me that many of the “troops,” who rarely said anything
philosophical, had a better general appreciation of the subject, just
as Wendy did, than their supposed leader and teacher. At least, in the
case of the kids, when they talked about “God” they usually meant
something vague, abstract and Emersonian. At best, they were
Deists. Transcendentalists. Pantheists. What the hell. That’s about
the best one can expect from most people.

Tim, in contrast, believed a gigantic “cosmic” entity of some kind was
“doing it.” This, to his way of thinking, was more “scientific.” In
the land of the partially sighted, a man who was blind was king.

Otto Preminger visited the community, prior to making one of the least
Psychedelian of the commercial “psychedelic” movies which appeared
around that time. Tim and Bill brought Preminger down to the Gatehouse
to meet me, but I was in town buying booze. In this instance my vice
may have saved me from a fate worse than death, but in general, my
drinking was getting to the problem stage.

Everything constructive that I wanted to do cost money, and I didn’t
have any. All I had were promises and parties, sometimes two of the
latter a week. As for developing the place into a self-supporting
mecca for Psychedelian religionists, the flaming handwriting was on
the wall, and the message was dire.

Tim’s group became increasingly disorganized, disgruntled and diluted
with transients. Haines, in self-defense, ceased to concern himself
with anything other than the Ashram and its immediate surroundings, as
did I in regard to the Gatehouse. It became clear the place was headed
towards anarchy and there wasn’t much Haines or I could do about
it. If the influx continued, we would merely hold enclaves in what
amounted to a public park.

This was dangerous in all kinds of ways but particularly threatening
to the owners. “Use easement” and related legal concepts were not part
of what might be called the “conceptuaries” of us peasants, but the
Hitchcock Cattle Corporation and Mellon family lawyers were aware of
such things. The risks that the twins had already taken of torts and
criminal defenses blaming everything on them were buffered by an
intimate knowledge of what kind of people they were dealing with, that
is, nice people, or at worst, harmless—to zillionaires—nuts.

Now, all of that was changing. For all they knew, some Uriah Heepish
person they had never seen had already knitted himself a shack of
twigs and wattles in their woods and was busily hand lettering page
after page of perfectly drafted legalese which would make the
surrounding acreage a legal leper colony or a port of entry when filed
with the county clerk, and tie them up in court for the next 400 years
if they didn’t pay him off through the nose.

Photographs? Tape recordings? There was a boundless scope for
apprehensions of all kinds.

Every time Tim went to New York he would get drunk and invite everyone
he met to come up to Millbrook. It was clear he was deliberately
demolishing the tripartite organization of the place which, for a
while, had seemed so natural and promising. Either Tommy, who now made
no secret of his dissatisfaction with the swelling population
statistics, would revolt or we would be raided again or both. A
wide-open Psychedelian mob scene would not be tolerated for long in
Dutchess County.

Given the enormous potential political clout of our patrons, and
assuming three relatively small and stable groups, a scene which could
have been written off by the powers that were as just another whimsy
of the rich might have survived much longer, but hordes of anonymous
fake Indians from the gutters of New York represented a virtual
guarantee of disaster in the near future.

We were up against long-entrenched local Republican ruling families of
such reactionary and downright fascist dispositions that they had
hated having Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “the Squire of Hyde Park,”
living among them. To use Aldous Huxley’s apt characterization of
Tim’s much milder earlier conduct, Tim was now “snoot-cocking” these
mass murderers and serial killers (warmongers and capital-punishment
freaks) in a way they could not ignore.

Tim knew, in a general kind of way, what would happen. Since it would
happen anyway, he wanted it to happen sooner rather than later and in
a form that suited the wave of populist political rhetoric that he was
riding at the time. He wanted to milk it. “It’s all a matter of
timing, Arthur,” he earnestly informed me several times.

It became clear that the modest, domestic, essentially reclusive
practice of Psychedelianism, which we had enjoyed for a while at
Millbrook and which suited the Hitchcocks and Bill and me and almost
everyone else around just fine, appeared of little account and
eminently expendable to Tim, who cared little for the gods of the
hearth, especially when those common-place deities were contrasted
with the newly risen and enormously powerful gods of television, the
mass media, and the popular culture in general, with whom, at the cost
of considerable personal sacrifice and unremitting effort, he believed
he had achieved an “in.”

As Tim saw it, our values led nowhere, which was true because they
were all ends in themselves, which we already were enjoying and merely
wished to preserve, as one would wish to preserve for as long as
possible the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

The assumption that the whole scene would collapse in a few years, at
most, was almost certainly correct if nothing changed radically for
the better. I don’t think Tim saw any future in the elitist,
defensive, xenophobic enclave concept. Our community was not located
where strange things were done under the midnight sun, or where an
influx of a million a year or so would bedazzle the local peasantry
with visions of down payments on mobile homes, but right smack in the
middle of one of the most exclusive residential areas in the United
States, which our most powerful and determined enemies considered
their own private parkland, more or less by divine right. After all,
they owned most of it, didn’t they?

In contrast to the pointlessness of trying to hang on under such
unfavorable circumstances, making a “photo op” out of it all and
pandering to the kid culture by pretending to be the most communistic
egalitarian-primitivist around, would help bring Tim fame and fortune
and perhaps support him in his old age. It would keep his show on the
road by keeping his name in the papers and his face on the tube.

There was nothing unreasonable about this analysis, but the question
that bothered me was: If Billy Hitchcock, Tim Leary, Bill Haines and I
(and the core community in general, which had demonstrated many signs
of life when given half a chance), with our various assets and
complementary talents, couldn’t maintain a stable Psychedelian
community, who could?

Well, what reason was there to believe that, at that time and in the
United States, anyone could? Even so, if Tim, Bill and I had ever
approached Billy with a reasonable (xenophobic enclavish) plan, in
which our roles were defined in terms of our demonstrable talents,
it’s not unimaginable that Billy (and maybe Peggy and maybe even
Tommy) would have funded the community the way it needed to be
funded. Maybe it would have been necessary to move the whole works
somewhere else, maybe offshore, but was a total crack-up absolutely
unavoidable?

Why, in an effort to straighten things out, didn’t Tim, Bill, Billy
and I ever take a trip together without having fifty or so other
people around at the same time? If it hadn’t done any good, at least
we would have had the satisfaction of knowing we had tried.

History is full of these almost unanswerable why didn’ts. The craziest
aspects of human nature are often better illustrated by what isn’t
done than by what is.

The history of science and technology, which one might suppose to be
relatively free of them, is in fact full of these seemingly
inexplicable lapses. What kinds of beings are these who waste millions
of man-hours by not inventing the cotton gin, for example? It’s said
that Whitney first got the idea by watching a cat trying to snatch a
chicken by clawing through a fence. Is it really that much harder to
imagine the cotton being pulled away from the seeds than to imagine
the seeds being picked from the cotton? Why were all those seafarers
allowed to perish from scurvy when the efficacy of citrus to revive
almost-dead men was common knowledge among sailors for centuries?

There is no shortage of current examples. Why, to cite one, doesn’t
every fire engine and emergency vehicle on earth carry a portable tank
of dimethyl sulfoxide to spray on burns and wounds? You tell me.

Few people can look back over their lives, after they have been around
a while, without thinking of all kinds of simple, obvious things they
could and should have done to solve their problems, but didn’t do, for
which there seems to be no explanation other than to say “I was
blind.”

I don’t think the problems of which I speak can be eliminated, at
least not directly, by reforms in the social order. They are
manifestations of a universal mental disability caused by imprints and
the repetition compulsion (or just plain “habit,” if you prefer),
which knows no borders and is stronger than any ideology.

The power of imprints, which are simply one’s original impressions of
how things are related, to persist in the face of overwhelming
contrary evidence, is illustrated in my case by a “belief” I hold that
the city of New York is north of Westchester County. Notice the
present tense. Knowing about a manifestation of this mechanism may
weaken, but rarely eliminates, the affliction.

I must have acquired this image at about the age of five, when my
family moved from the city to Crestwood. I have been in and around and
under and over the city and its environs off and on ever since, but to
this day, unless I make an effort to see it otherwise, the island of
Manhattan points north.

The East River is on the West Side and like the Hudson, which is on
the East Side, flows north. I recall being vaguely concerned as a
child, when the family car would turn left on the Bronx River Parkway
for our annual trip to Vermont, that we were headed in the wrong
direction. “Well, Dad’s probably going around the city somehow,” I
would say to myself, and return to elbowing my brothers for my fair
share of space in the back seat. At some point, when the landscape
became unfamiliar, the entire world would make a gigantic 180-degree
turn, and both Crestwood and New York City would be behind us, firmly
to the south but, in my mind’s eye, with the city closer to us than
the suburban county.

Why? It was my original impression, that’s all. The city seemed cold,
I guess, in every sense of the term, and Crestwood seemed warm in
every sense of the word. Crestwood was therefore south of the
city.

Returning from New York in the helicopter one clear and almost
windless day, Billy decided to go straight up and hover for a
while. The entire landscape of which I speak was spread out beneath us
like a relief map. I could see the actual state of affairs in great
detail. Billy and I had been talking about the contrasts and
similarities of our boyhoods and we both tried to locate my old
boarding school in Bronxville. No luck. I suggested that we swoop down
and follow the Bronx River but, on consulting the gas gauge, Billy
decided we had better be on our way.

Did this experience correct or even diminish this ludicrous mental
problem?

Not in the slightest. The Battery’s up and the Bronx is down. I still
have two maps of the area in my mind’s eye, one correct and
superficial, the other false and powerful.

It’s an irritant when I’m reading fiction set in the area. I know my
imagery is warped, and I struggle with it for a while, and then give
up. How can I possibly enjoy a good story while twisting maps around
in my mind at the same time? It can’t be done. At least it’s
conscious. I can, if I must, as when driving in and out of the New
York area, force myself to see things right side up, as it were.

Could I get rid of this troublesome imprint on a trip? Certainly, if
I insisted on regression to my early childhood for that purpose, and
found someone willing and able to assist me in this usually boring and
frequently laborious process. It has never seemed worth the effort. If
repeatedly jailed because of a compulsion to turn road signs in the
area backwards, or something of the kind, I probably would think it
worth the effort.

It may all serve a useful purpose, in that I am reminded, whenever the
terrain of my birthplace is brought to my attention, which is pretty
frequently, of the power of imprints in general. Without these
reminders, I might forget why it is so many people believe in so many
crazy things. It encourages tolerance, of which combative people can
always use an extra shot, and pity for lunatics, of which almost all
of us need as much as we can get.

I’m not talking about indoctrination as it is ordinarily understood.
If, during my childhood, the doctrine that New York City was north of
us had been constantly propounded as what every-one ought to believe,
the way supernaturalist “Christianity” was, in our home in Crestwood,
and I had been obliged to bow my head and affirm that the city was in
a “space warp zone,” or something similar, and to listen to bizarre
anecdotes and patently fallacious arguments denying the validity of
magnetism and condemning Rand McNally as an agent of the Devil, I
think I would have resisted.

Since the subject never came up, there was nothing to resist.

Catholicism is more powerful than Protestantism in this way. The Roman
Catholic Church does not, except as almost emotionless mental
exercises, trouble to make out any kind of rational argument to its
captive audience of little kiddies. Instead, it simply hammers in the
images as early as possible and reinforces the habits as often as
possible.

The Sado-Judeo-Paulinian zombies who have criminalized Psychedelianism
and destroyed the Bill of Rights in an effort to stamp it out were
brought up on a vast array of lunatic imprints and are blind slaves to
the repetition compulsion. Most of our persecutors are so crazy about
so many important particular things that they might as well be called
crazy in a general way. For people loaded with the classic American
Sado-Judeo-Paulinian religious imprints, the whole world is turned
upside down.

This mental derangement, involving, as it does, so many
self-destructive compulsions, will eventually polish the place off if
it goes uncorrected. Americans are not simply European transplants or
the descendants thereof. They are a different breed altogether, and
the rest of the world ought to keep its guard up .

Americans, in general and unless pushed too far, are willing to
disregard what is staring them right in the face in favor of believing
authoritative pronouncements or the standard cant or popular myths on
any and all subjects. Compared to Europeans, they are just plain
gullible. They “have faith,” faith in anything they want to have faith
in. There is no need to “have faith” in what seems obviously correct,
or probable. The necessity for faith only arises when one wishes to
believe in, or cannot help believing, things that are inherently
fantastic or “unbelievable.”

In Vermont, in 1972, I got some plans for a plywood dinghy, and
discovered what seemed to be a serious error in the drawings of the
bow. I wrote to the company, one of the two largest in the nation, and
asked about it.

“You’re quite right,” the reply came back, “the line drawing [sic] on
the bow is in the improper position. Over the past couple of years,
more than 3,000 Eight Balls have been made, but you are the first one
to make a comment on this fact.”

Only a week or so later, I received a letter from the art director of
Portal Publications, one of the biggest art print houses in the
country. I had complained about the quality of a Maxfield Parrish I
ordered; it looked murky to me.

I quote a few lines:

“At last! A real live opinion. I’ve had to contend with oceans of
praise. We’ve sold hundreds of thousands … no attempt was made to
correct the color. I feel embarrassed and infuriated … disgusted
… .”

People who build boats and order art prints are not, generally
speaking, stupid. The various generals who repeatedly assaulted
virtually impregnable positions with inadequate forces in the Civil
War before Grant came along were not stupid. All those cotton planters
who never once considered that you could pull the cotton away from the
seeds instead of pulling the seeds away from the cotton were not
stupid. All those sea captains who failed to include a couple barrels
of dried lemons in their list of stores before sailing weren’t
stupid.

The builders of the great Near Eastern civilizations who invented
astronomy, mathematics, writing, and law, but took 2,000 years to
think of making wedge-shaped bricks for arches and vaults, were not
stupid.

They were not sufficiently disenchanted. The psychedelic experience is
not the spell, but the lifting of the spell, the transformation of the
toad, the maiden’s salvation; not the sword in the stone, but the
sword out of the stone.

Was there any way we could have prevailed at Millbrook against the
monstrous forces of evil arrayed against us? I don’t know, but the
first thing required would have been a “united front.” If Haines,
Hitchcock and I had set a date for a trip and invited Tim to join us,
it’s hard to imagine him staying away. It would have been impolitic,
the one and only cardinal sin in Tim’s book. He would have made
difficulties about time, place and circumstances so as to give himself
an edge, and these manipulations probably would have aroused Haines to
a fury, but a meeting to discuss the proposed trip could have been
arranged at which, perhaps, Billy and I could have bombed Tim and Bill
and, at minimum, things would have lightened up a little.

My memory is hazy about it. It seems to me Haines and I discussed the
possibility once or twice. I recall Haines flatly saying, “He won’t do
it,” and changing the subject, but I never talked to Billy about it,
or did I? I’m sure I never suggested it to Tim. I let it slide. I
never made a project out of it, never allowed the subject to fully
engage my imagination.

By the time such a trip became a necessity if we were to survive as a
community, I was dispirited and exhausted, ready to throw in the
towel. The thought of trying to persuade Tim, Bill or Billy to do
anything they didn’t want to do made me shudder, quiver, vibrate,
flinch, flutter and roll. I had been over that trench top too many
times. I was groggy and shell-shocked. It is said victory in battle
often goes to the side that makes one last effort when neither side
has any heart left for fighting.

At Millbrook a last charge of the forces of right bows and bright
dawns was never made.